How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph), with the exception of Part V, which runs (Part#. "Short Title". Paragraph). Part V has no numbered chapters—only title headings.
Quote #7
Soon they felt like lepers. When they left Bohemia, her husband's former colleagues signed a public statement slandering and condemning him. Surely they did that only so as not to lose their jobs as Tamina's husband had lost his job not long before. But they did it. (IV.12.4)
Tamina's experience as the wife of a political dissident reflects Kundera's firsthand experience with the unpleasantness of the Communist regime in his country. Although Tamina understands why her husband's friends and colleagues officially condemned him, it definitely leaves a bad taste in her mouth, and she never wants to return to Prague. Kundera himself reflected on the value of people standing up to the regime by refusing to sign such denunciations of friends—and he came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the risk to resist.
Quote #8
"...I've realized that the problem of power is the same everywhere, in your country and in ours, in the East as well as in the West. We should not try to replace one type of power with another, we should repudiate the very principle of power and repudiate it everywhere." (IV.19.6)
Hugo credits Tamina—who's just not that into his political theories—with the inspiration for this thought about governance. It sounds good on the surface, but Hugo's solution to the problem of power is a bit like Gonzalo's speech about having no government but being governor on Prospero's island: it's utterly contradictory and impossible to implement. Tamina doesn't really care about the particulars of the article he has written. All that matters is that Hugo will now be unable to fetch her notebooks for her from Prague.
Quote #9
I am watching them from the great distance of two thousand kilometers. It is the autumn of 1977, my country has been sweetly doing for nine years now in the strong embrace of the Russian empire, Voltaire has been expelled from the university, and my books, having been gathered up from all the public libraries, are locked away in some state cellar. (V."Poets".2)
Kundera pops in and out of timelines in this work to give historical significance to the stories he's creating. While Voltaire and the bevy of poets at the Writers Club get into it about what love really is, they can't know that a political disaster of epic proportions awaits them.